


first love / late spring

by diurno



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Boarding School, Catholic Guilt, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Dysfunctional Relationships, Forests, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, It makes sense I swear, Lots of it, M/M, Mutual Pining, Running Away, Spirits, implied child neglect, not between each other just.. all over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-06-25 12:18:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19745629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diurno/pseuds/diurno
Summary: "I love this," Jaemin whispers, voice drowsy. "I love this. It reminds me of why I stayed alive last summer," his own words are drowned somewhere between their blankets, glued to each other on two narrow single beds brought together in the center of the room."Stay alive, then," he answers, on the brink of delirium. From love or fatigue, he didn't know. "Let's be alive.""Okay," Donghyuck felt Jaemin nod. "Okay, let's be alive."or, Jaemin and Donghyuck learn to leave the past behind. In their own way.





	first love / late spring

**Author's Note:**

> just to be clear i write for cancers, gender questioning gays and girls who used to dress weird in highschool
> 
> [support and donate to the black lives matter movement!](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WUJUAQs_vMDixJAWRMONwyvfdEcPvSFwX5_ExQhytDg/edit?usp=drivesdk)

_"Most clinicians have witnessed how difficult memories_

_resurface when a client feels truly seen, heard, and loved_

_in therapy. A metaphor for this process is "backdraft."_

_Backdraft occurs when a firefighter opens a door with a_

_hot fire behind it. Oxygen rushes in, causing a burst of_

_flame. Similarly, when the door of the heart is opened_

_with compassion, intense pain can sometimes be_

_released. Unconditional love reveals the conditions under_

_which we were unloved in the past. Therefore, some_

_clients, especially those with a history of childhood abuse_

_or neglect, are fearful of compassion."_

**(Gilbert et al., 2011)**

* * *

**i.**

_then._

"How do we…" Donghyuck coughs out through the phone, voice hesitant and swinging around Jaemin's shape like his perspective on Donghyuck's words meant more than his words themselves. Like water filling up a hole on the sidewalk, his words mold to Jaemin's likings. "How do we separate our own sadness, from our mother's? How do we - how do we know when it's us and when it's them?"

13 year old Jaemin hums lowly from the other side of the phone. His voice has been getting deeper lately - scratching the back of Donghyuck's throat like a rough beard. It sounds a lot like growing up. "What do you mean?" he asks, and Donghyuck mirrors his previous hum, shrugging although Jaemin can't really see it. The other boy takes it as a pass to keep going. "I don't think we can separate it. I think we're the same. Us and our mothers."

"That's," the older gulps, his duvet pressing down on his knees. Can comfort ever be a prison? Is comfort comfort because it's exactly that - a prison? "Terrifying."

"I know," his voice sounds louder through the phone, static even. He feels close, very close, and then out of reach all at the same time. But Donghyuck knows better than that - Jaemin is Jaemin. He's never unreachable. It's similar to knowing about other countries; they're there, open for you to visit, even when sometimes you forget that. Even when this world doesn't seem like _your_ world. "It's terrifying. Not just for us, right? To them, too. I think about that sometimes… I think our mother's sadness is the same as ours because they are both tied to the fact that we were birthed. In this world. As it is."

"Like, worry?" Donghyuck guesses, his phone's screen pressed to his sweaty cheeks. He turns around in bed, lying on his side, and he wonders what's Jaemin's position. How's his house like.

"No, not worry for being born," he explains, and his voice is very clear. His house seems really quiet. "I think it's like… Well, I wouldn't know. But I think giving birth to something must be awful. Terrible. Scary. It must feel a lot like something is taken from you, right? I think having kids - but especially _birthing_ them - must feel like having to surrender to someone else's wishes."

"Yeah, maybe," the boy presses his own palms to his stomach, imagining what being pregnant feels like. It's useless - not everything feels like something else. "We do take a lot from our mothers."

"Yeah," Jaemin agrees. The "yeah's" of his voice sound weirdly twirled and cursive. "But not from our fathers. Fuck fathers."

"Fuck fathers," Donghyuck laughs easily, a heavy press on the pit of his stomach that makes him wonder what is he going to do. What is he going to do with connection like this? Sometimes Jaemin is more Donghyuck than Donghyuck himself. If that makes sense. "They don't do enough. They don't have anything taken from them."

The line goes still for a second. "Isn't it the worst thing ever?" comes after it, his voice thoughtful. Distant. "To know a huge part of the sadness we share with our mothers is because they married men like our fathers. Because we're taught to be men like our fathers."

"Because we're taught to be men," he adds. _Men._ What a word. _Women._ Also another big word. Donghyuck doesn't know a lot of men or women - mostly, these lines are blurred. Obviously, most people he's met have fallen in one of those two categories; but it doesn't feel like it. Donghyuck's memories of people never include words like men or women, boy or girl. "Isn't _that_ weird? Men. We're expected to be them."

"Yes, we are," Jaemin agrees again, and his voice sounds a little bit more heated now. "What even are they, men? Are men our fathers? How do people expect us to see them and want to be like them?"

"Right?" the older boy's voice raises a little, to match Jaemin's. "How does anyone find love in men. In fathers. I wonder how people manage it…"

"Do you think you're a man, Donghyuck?" finds Donghyuck's ears through the phone like a snake dangling from someone's neck. In any other voice; it would be hell. In any other words coming from any other throat it would be mortifying… But it's Jaemin's. So it's not. It's shelter; it's pure, boyish curiosity.

So he answers truthfully. "I don't know," he says. Because it is true. Donghyuck doesn't know how to separate himself from masculinity, from what is put upon him; it's too hard. It's too hard to peel away the layer of history sticking to his skin, the men that have come behind him and shaped his existence in the world. "I don't know what's a man."

"It's us," Jaemin tells him like it's obvious. _But are 13 year old boys men?_ "I think."

"That's giving me a headache," he lies. Out loud, to Jaemin. It's probably the first time he ever lied to him. "I'm going to sleep," he then announces. That's not a lie. It's more of an uncertain promise - Donghyuck has no idea if he'll ever be able to sleep after talking to Jaemin. It's hard to have a heart and not let it go crazy next to him. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Hyuck," the boy whispers back to him, words falling into the shadows and sitting there. Donghyuck could feel them; on his fingers, on his tummy, on his tongue, God, he could feel Jaemin's words on the open bruise he had on fourth grade after scraping his knees. Jaemin peels him layer by layer - he's everywhere, everywhere. There's not a moment in Donghyuck's life he hasn't wrapped his legs around. "I love you."

Then Donghyuck hungs up.

And spends the rest of the night thinking about nothing.

It's a tragedy, really, that the only time Donghyuck can have Jaemin physically by his side is when school starts again.

**ii.**

_now._

"Your collar has a lipstick stain on it," Jeno whispers to the breeze, his words quiet and rather blurry from where he stood; in the upper corner of the room, as translucent as the wind, hoping for his existence to be but a mere thought, an old memory taking form. "It has been stained ever since I saw you for the first time. Was it your mother?"

The student keeps innocently grooming his uniform, warm tanned skin contrasting with the navy blue trousers. His shoes are impeccably polished - black, round, made small sounds of life whenever he walked. He looked very much like a nutcracker doll when dressed in his uniform; both in how small his figure appeared when watched from up in the roof and how his semblance seemed collected, polite.

Jeno doesn't know his name. Not well. He's not fond of the other boys - there are lots of them, and he likes this one in specifical only. They're about the same age, but differ in almost everything else. One, the boy is human. Second, Jeno is a forest spirit. Or something like that. No one has ever told him, actually. He just assumed because of the forest calling, because of his arms that stand ahead of him and oftenly yearn for the earth, for the true and tangible. Three, the boy certainly doesn't have the moon for his mother.

Or at least Jeno likes to believe she is his mother. He likes to look at her, round and bright, and believe they belong together. Because, if not her, then who? To whom would Jeno belong to if not the moon? There's no one else, nothing else, that has been around long enough to be family.

The boy hums under his breath, a tune Jeno doesn't know, and eventually leaves his dormitory, leaving Jeno to leap in the air like a wild bunny, the shimmer of his form glowing pink and blurry under the dark room. It's an experience, to touch the walls and the beds and the wood from the wardrobe. It feels a lot like gathering patches of his body that have touched the world, a lot like recognizing himself as closer to humans than to the moon. Jeno reaches out and smooths a hand over the wall, and suddenly his body is a body. Suddenly, he exists.

It's what he does, these days. Watches teenage human boys come and go, looking like Jeno in almost every way one can, yelling and laughing and often playfully bantering with each other. It feels like watching from another side of the veil, like trying to describe a room he's locked outside of, but it's home, in some way. It's better than wandering through the coast, forest clinging to the school's territory rather stubbornly. It's better than walking alone.

The boy's dormitory is small. Probably one of the smallest Jeno has seen, but it's cozy nonetheless. The walls are clean from any indication of human activity, beige and spotless with no posters or portraits. There are two beds: one, always unmade, and another one, never messy. Jeno knows two boys sleep here, because there are two suitcases every time school starts again, but he never got around to see the other boy. All he knows is tanned skin, round head and a lipstick stained collar.

He sits on the bed, barely securing himself from slipping right through the mattress. It's hard to control his form nowadays; he's been on edge for too long to even manage to be tangible. Stress eats him alive when it's summer break, because it means being alone in the huge historical building that is this school - it means walking around empty halls and classrooms, touching the walls and feeling no vibration of life under it, only the particular rumble of emptiness and a few, other lonely ghosts.

It's the second week of September, and classes have started a while ago. Since then, Jeno hasn't been able to force himself into a non transparent form; actually, ever since the Summer solstice, a lot of things have become harder and harder to do. Even the usual moon rotations have been hell to find, which lead to Jeno getting lost in the forest at least two or three times in the past week. The energies surrounding the school bring him to the tip of his toes, tangling his nerves, and the boy keeps coming back to his room with no roommate to greet, even though Jeno knows the bed is used every night.

He reaches a hand to touch its pillow, and the results are the same: A tingle of life and movement, even if a little weaker than the other bed's. Hell, Jeno can sniff it in the air - it's an occupied space, somewhere someone can call home.

Jeno would know. He's the best at calling every place in the world home.

He stretches his legs out in the bed, watching how his feet twirl under the light in clear transparency, almost a boy shaped spell. This body of his - it's hard to keep it in check. Jeno is often confused by it, frightened by it, tries to crawl out of his existence just to stumble back and fall right into it again. It's not the same as human bodies; Jeno could never run away from himself because himself is a made up concept, an identity he had to build from scratch. He presents - and by presenting, he makes himself real. By touching the world outside and being seen, he forges himself to be what he wants to be.

Which is… Whatever it is. Whatever Jeno plans on doing in the future.

But, as for now, looking like a teenage boy is okay. And being a boy - whatever that might mean - is okay.

**iii.**

_then_ _._

Jaemin's back is tanned and long, with large shoulders and a handful of splattered moles across his skin, down his spine like the sea clinging to the coast. He's perched to his homework in bed, pajama pants hanging down his hips while Donghyuck sits behind him on the desk, quietly pretending to not stare even though they both know he is.

There's tea and biscuits on the end of the bed, and Donghyuck uses it as an excuse to turn around in his spinning chair and count the dents of Jaemin's column against his skin, starting from the deep end of his neck to the gentle dimples at the bottom of his spine, surrounded by healthy fat that looks - and feels, mind you - squishy enough for him to just reach out and squeeze; like a lovesick teenage boy, poisoned by the simplest wish of tenderness.

There's a weird twinge in his gut that didn't belong there not long ago - one that fumbles between his nerves, punctuates the skin on his fingertips with tiny, barely visible needles, urging him to _touch._ Jaemin's back is a monument; it looks like a bridge one has to cross to get to their greatest adventure, like the map to somewhere far, far away that feels like home. Donghyuck's insides twist and turn in the yearning for it, in how his stupid 15 year old fingers could just run up and down the skin and feel it grabbing him back, locking him in place.

It's probably warm, like sun bathed sand. Warm in an overwhelming way, feverish and sick, delirious wishes of love, love, love clogging up Donghyuck's brain and clinging to his temples, inside his skull where his most shameful wishes lie. How is it, that someone's naked back serves as the only bed Donghyuck has ever wanted to lay on? Serves as the only supernatural, the only weird and strange and scary he ever had in his life? Jaemin's body seems, looks, feels haunted, because Donghyuck has never wanted to touch anything more. And what is fear, if not the urge to come closer despite it being too dangerous? What is fear, if not wanting something too much and not being able to have it?

And what is wanting something too much, if not the pending fear of losing it to something else - what is horror if not the urge to kill what you love just so you know it wasn't taken from you? Just so you know the only reason you lost it was yourself?

_How can anybody have Jaemin,_ he thought. _How can anybody have him? How can anybody have him and not live in the constant fear of losing him?_

"Do you need anything?" Jaemin asks without looking up, voice bending to Donghyuck's ears like it does. There's a hollow scratch on the back of his tone that makes it hard to know if he's being silly or not, but Donghyuck shrugs it off anyway.

Does he? It's hard to know. Needing something often goes unnoticed.

"No," he answers, spinning back to face his own homework. The certainty that Jaemin is there, back faced to him and laying on the bed, is almost a torture itself. Donghyuck wonders if anyone has ever been tempted like this before.

_No._ How easy it is to think rivers and, despite that, let only a few droplets fall from your lips.

"Then come closer," the boy speaks up again, too confident for his 15 year old self. Too confident for his lean body, for his thin arms and cracking voice. "It's cold."

Donghyuck looks at him, unphased. "Why don't you wear a shirt?" despite that, he does come closer - in baby steps to Jaemin's bed, he throws himself next to him, letting the younger boy snake arms around his neck quietly, a killer to their victim at best.

He makes a face. "I don't like how my shirt feels against my skin."

"We shouldn't cuddle, then," the tanned boy points out, letting his hand rest on the small of Jaemin's back. It's comfortable, there - almost like he could feel the bones and the muscles and the blood all clinging to his palm, saying 'welcome back, welcome back, it's been lonely without you'.

"No, that won't do," Jaemin blows air through his nose. "Not a patch of skin in my body that isn't Donghyuck friendly."

"Shut the fuck up," Donghyuck murmurs, blooming a crimson red under Jaemin's cage of arms. Like a sunflower to the sun, Jaemin holds him hostage.

He laughs, glowing pink under the darkness of his own shadows, and Donghyuck lets himself slip away in that. Lets the cosmos and the stars and every chakra in his orbit crash against Jaemin's, lets his Venus reach out for his and laces the constellations of Virgo and Gemini like a hand sewn jacket dirty from last summer. Donghyuck lets it all align together, fire and air, moons and jupiters and mercuries and all types of things that come once you fall in love with your very own best friend.

  
  


"Hey, Hyuck?" later that night, Jaemin calls from the foot of his bed, his back resting against the wood as he sat on the small space between their beds, legs crossed. "I think my ankle is bleeding on the ground."

"Huh?" Donghyuck rolls in his bed to lay on his side, looking at Jaemin curiously. "Why?"

"I don't know," the boy examines the wound on his ankle, an old one that got reopened after Jaemin accidentally hit the corner of the desk with it. It's an ugly red, dripping to his calves, and Donghyuck leans closer to it. "It wasn't bleeding before."

The ground under his feet has a small puddle of livid, bright blood over it, drying at an alarming pace because of the fan. Jaemin stands there, back hunched, looking at his own blood like it's a butterfly with a clipped wing, and Donghyuck finds himself at lost for words, too. It's hard, being a teenager - he has no idea of how to act normal in certain situations. What lingers on his mind is an old questioning, really; how is Jaemin so alive? How does one deal with that - with having such an alive body, mind and soul?

It's not that Donghyuck isn't alive, but rather that it doesn't feel like it. He's oftenly clumsy, oftenly scared, and Jaemin, as far as he knows, is never either of these things. He might be stupid sometimes, and he trips on his words cheesily, but he's still very much a vessel for light, while Donghyuck can't even imagine being this close to the earth. Can't even imagine how it feels to not live up with the stars.

_Perhaps he's not bleeding_ , he thinks to himself. Perhaps his body is just coming home to the earth, the puddle of blood a permanent stain to not only the ground but the roots under it, to the harsh core of the Earth. Perhaps Jaemin's body and everything that comes of it is permanent, something Donghyuck's own existence couldn't dare to touch.

He's almost thankful when Jaemin gets up to clean it, because otherwise Donghyuck would just let it there, afraid of disturbing the earth, afraid of erasing a trace - any trace - of Jaemin's staying in this bedroom.

Then he slaps himself out of it, because _gross._ No one needs to know about Donghyuck's perturbing relationship with love; no one needs to fully comprehend how gross and downright nasty it can be to love someone, anyone, this much.

"You should be more careful," he smooths a hand over Jaemin's head of dark hair, watching the strands slide to his eyes and down his features. He looks… like a boy. If that's even a possible thing to look like; if boyish means anything at all. He's young, younger than the world, and Donghyuck wonders - if that's what he wants. If being a boy is a choice.

"I don't know how it happened," Jaemin hums, letting his head be petted like a little hummingbird, closing its wings in the inside of Donghyuck's hands. How tender it must be, there between his palms; dark and warm, where he could lay under and know he's protected. Are gentle hands even cages? Is there a way - any way - to lock something down without killing it immediately? "I was just here and then suddenly I was more blood than person."

_More blood than person_ , Donghyuck repeated to himself. Salty in the inside of his cheeks, dry under his fingernails, dripping from his hips, all over his ankle. That's how love must feel like, he imagines; a stain all over, untamed, blossoming under skin and inside veins. Love, he figures, is much like blood, like spit, like guts and skin. It's gross in its meaning, but still - everyone is obsessed with it.

"That doesn't matter, Nana," he whispers, playing with the hairs of his nape. "You need to take care."

Jaemin's lips stretch into an all knowing Cheshire cat smile. "But if I do, you'll stop taking care of me," his voice is low, matching Donghyuck's. His face is a warm tone of yellow under the incandescent lights, a kaleidoscope in form of a boy. "I don't want that."

"I'll never stop taking care of you," the tanned boy chuckles. "Because you're dumb. You're going to get beaten up one day and I'll drive you to the hospital."

"My hero," Jaemin smiles, wider this time. His fingers reach out to run down the length of Donghyuck's nose, and it's a tragedy, really, that the thrill in his heart is for such a small thing. That's love, too - his stomach drops to his feet like he's being held at gunpoint, but it's just Jaemin's long fingers, little spider legs glued to his palms that make Donghyuck's world a whole more thrilling.

Maybe that's just how it is. Maybe Mary Shelley was right and turning your back on the beast you created is the same as turning your back on yourself - maybe Jaemin is a patchwork mess, every part of his body having been killed for, stolen or simply a survivor. Maybe he's just a small collage of memories in the shape of a person.

Sleeping next to Jaemin is an experience.

Donghyuck knew it would be, but comfort lulls him to places he could never run away from. Jaemin's naked back fits against his chest like their organs are mere continuations of each other's bodies, the dents of his curled spine pressed onto Donghyuck's belly as if a knife taking place in his stomach. It's hard to not fall in love with that.

Jaemin curls up to himself, the top of his head awkwardly tucked under Donghyuck's chin despite him being taller. It's awkward. They're teenage boys, anyways - everything in Donghyuck feels awake. Every bit of skin is alive, all atoms moving, buzzing, twisting. That's the word: _awake._ Whenever Jaemin's skin comes in contact with his, he's wide awake, like the world had new colors he just got to experience. He'd go through life half asleep, he thinks, haven't he met Jaemin. He'd never know what it is like to wake up.

"Are you asleep?" the barely younger boy murmurs, locking Donghyuck's wandering hands under his elbows and over his stomach.

"No," Donghyuck murmurs back; his eyes are lazily open, almost closing by default. "Will be soon."

He grazes his nails down Jaemin's back softly, humming under his breath. The skin on it is tender and pliant, warm from the blankets. How is anyone's body like that - how can anyone be so tender? How can anyone's skin be so worthy of care?

"I love this," Jaemin whispers, voice drowsy. "I love this. It reminds me of why I stayed alive last summer," his own words are drowned somewhere between their blankets, glued to each other on two narrow single beds brought together in the center of the room.

"Stay alive, then," he answers, on the brink of delirium. From love or fatigue, he didn't know. "Let's be alive."

"Okay," Donghyuck felt Jaemin nod. "Okay, let's be alive."

**iv.**

_now._

Jeno never knew how it felt to be alive.

Not even in the depressing sense of it; just the faint memory of tenderness he can't get out of his head, no matter how much he tries. It's hard - to not know what it feels like to be touched. There are times Jeno craves it so much he thinks he might cry, and others where he believes just one tender touch could unfold an entire other being from inside of him, a sense of being awake for the first time in his life.

It feels like something big, to be touched. Jeno was frightened by it, but only because he wanted it so bad. Only because it seemed like what it takes to be alive: one touch, and an arm is an arm. Another one, a thigh is a thigh. The touch serves as a proof you exist, when hands brush skin and suddenly a body is known to be a body, or so he has been taught. Craving it is permanent, Jeno believes. It's an active noun.

That's why he might be so… Lonely. Or perhaps that's not the word, because it takes knowing a companion to be lonely. Lonely is not what he is - or what he might think he is, because all he knows is the forest and locked dorms. All he knows is craving so actively he might burst; like fine chyna under too much tension. That's how he imagines touch feels like - a handful of cracks showing up like fingerprints left behind, defenses breaking under someone's stare, someone's tension.

He doesn't know tension. But he knows the boy in the dorm has it - because his skin is filled with cracks.

Which is why he should not be doing what he's doing right now: because the boy - Donghyuck, he found out - is not alone. His roommate is there for the night, and Jeno wonders if he can see him; wonders if he's better at recognizing forest spirits than Donghyuck is. Jeno sits in the dark, legs crossed over the flat superficie of their desk, and waits to be noticed when the door opens and a tall, lanky boy that surely isn't Donghyuck walks in.

He's… Beautiful. In a way Jeno wouldn't know how to describe; there's not a lot of beauty here. He's beautiful in a non vulgar, benevolent way. Not much of an angel, the boy's eyes stretch like the universe, two parallel dimensions sitting at each side of his nose - and _what_ a nose. Perhaps Jeno is forever too enchanted by human traits, by their long arms and noses and sternums, but maybe the boy has some loving memory in his face that's hard not to fall for. His face, Jeno figures, is a lingering memory; a love story that denies to fade.

Even when it's contorted in wonder. Especially then.

The thing is: Jeno has been seen before. By janitors, students, even teachers. They all have the same reaction, most of the times: paralyzing shock, walking in circles around Jeno like he's the key to a very important question, leaving the room in fear. Even after that, mostly don't mention the encounter to their peers; in the fear of looking foolish, or in the jealousy of not wanting to share the discovery, they hide away the things they've seen and try to recreate it. It's a bit imoral of him, he supposes, but Jeno never shows up to the same person twice. It just seems like none of their business that he's a forest spirit.

This boy, though. The first thing he does as he realizes that there's a translucent pink being in his (dark, for the record) room is to quietly shut the door and approach Jeno, his steps delicate like folded paper.

His aura is something Jeno wonders if people can also see. It's… Alluring, in some way. He's fairly young, probably months or so than Jeno, and his pupils swirl on his globes like two little snow globes, unfocused and freshly sweet, as if he were more dog than person. His entire face is rather peachy, and he looks - that being an understatement - docile; like a lamb. When he gets closer to Jeno, it's in innocent curiosity that has him confidently reaching out a hand without the fear of getting his palms burnt.

Perhaps there _is_ some dumbness in being this curious, this näive. But since Jeno is invested in his face, in his eyes, he allows it to happen.

"Hi," the boy breathes out, like he's talking to a wild animal he's not sure he can interact with. With his hand so close to touching Jeno, he can almost smell the rush of blood on his veins - he can almost know his blood matches the one on the ground a few days ago.

Should he answer? Jeno knows his own voice too well. Restless won't let him fall under the doom of sadness; even if his loneliness is evident, Jeno still makes himself known in the forest, talking and singing and yelling at the top of his lungs. Life, he figured out, is what you make it to be, in the sense of having to keep moving if you don't want to get mistaken for death.

"Hi," his voice scratches back an answer, watching in mild fascination as the boy jumps in surprise, in horror, in wonder. He's jumpy around Jeno, like an hesitant gazelle, and it's… Cute. He's nothing like Donghyuck.

"Who are you?" he mumbles, stumbling on his words like he's trying to access why there is a forest spirit sitting on his desk, just beside his laptop. The boy looks like he's trying to get himself some time, hand stuck in the air as if Jeno could bite it out in any moment. "I'm not going to rat you out but I'm also, uhm, kinda scared."

Which he could, by the way. But he won't - after a quick glance, his fingers seemed as though stubby and rather chubby, like a baby's.

Jeno speaks up again, a smile playing on his lips. Humans are endearing, in some way. This one in particular. "I'm Jeno."

"Cool, cool, cool, hi Jeno," the boy coughs out. "Can I - Can I touch you?"

You see.

Jeno has no time to feel weird about this, no time to want his first time being directly touched to be special, but still; he does. Panic fills him up, around the corners of his stomach and the minimal gap between his teeth. The boy's hand comes closer and closer, and Jeno cowers under it, afraid - afraid of how much he wants it, ashamed of his own need to be recognized as a person, even if it meant interacting with people that saw him as a demon, as a monster, as a ghost.

"Hey, buddy," he whispers, retreating his hand to Jeno's clear horror. "I'm not going to do it if you don't want me to. I'm Jaemin. Nice to meet you," by reflex, Jaemin offers a hand, his palm open and rather vulnerably close to Jeno's mouth.

_No_ , he thought to himself. _You can't bite a boy's hand out just because you want him to touch you and are ashamed of it._

He ignores the stretched out hand, nodding to Jaemin like he's just been told instructions.

"Okay, not really a touchy dude, I can totally work with that," Jaemin says to himself, his previous fear being exchanged by curiosity; commodity even. "What are you doing here, Jeno? Are you lost? Do you need help?"

"Um," Jeno looks down to his own feet. How can he explain what he's doing here - if not by saying he's been stalking Jaemin's roommate for what seems like months, simply because he couldn't stand being alone in the forest? "Um. Yeah. I do need help."

The boy's eyes glimmer in satisfaction, adventure nodding on his mind. It's a pity Jeno is such a liar; perhaps he could've just gotten out. But now it's too late, and he's stuck with having a company for as long as he can drag this out. _Oh, bother._

"Cool! With what? I can help you! My roommate Donghyuck can too! And my friends, Renj-" Jaemin blabbers on like a little kid, forgetting himself and his situation for a moment. "Oh! Sorry!" he lowers his voice, afraid of getting Jeno scared again. "I can help. I have people that can help too."

_I can help you. I have people that can help you,_ he said. Is there anything - in the entire galaxy - that Jeno would rather hear than that?

There's just one thing. What would he even need help for? He tries to remember all the movies about supernatural creatures he snuck into, and they all seem to point to one direction: home.

"I need help," he starts. "To get back home."

Jaemin's eyes sparkle under the lights with mischief, his nose and neck flushed and dipped in pink. It's too pure, in a sense - Jeno could almost reach out and have his hand push through Jaemin's chest. In a few ways, he's Donghyuck's counterpart on innocence; while Jaemin is näive, Donghyuck is oblivious. For someone being followed by a spirit for at least an entire month, he truly can seem ignorant to things.

Jeno cracks a smile to Jaemin's direction, letting himself float away at the sins he just committed by letting himself be seen, be known.

  
  
  


Unfortunately, Jaemin's friends didn't have the luck to be as calm and collected as him. Donghyuck included.

Having to pretend to not know him - it's stupid. Donghyuck walks in, and a part of Jeno breaks in half, although he has no idea why. His legs, the ones that fight so hard to keep him up, seem to dissolve, to melt, to bend until they break. His hands, once nimble and smart, fall useless to his lap; and his throat, his poor throat, seems to dry out like a fever, rushing through Jeno.

This is how he knows, he guesses. When Donghyuck sits at the end of the bed and Jaemin's hands find his, it's very easy to know Jeno got himself somewhere he shouldn't be. It's not just the two of him - there are five more of them. They fuss around Jeno, eyes burning with curiosity, while Jaemin and Donghyuck quietly talk to each other, in their own world. Jeno doesn't let any of them get closer enough to touch; he doesn't trust himself for it.

"You said you want to go back home," Donghyuck starts, his hair freshly trimmed short; like a rich schoolboy, which is what he is. His uniform is wrinkled, and if Jeno concentrates hard enough, it's even possible to see Jaemin's fingerprints all over it, buzzing from across the room. It's _all_ over him - the touches, that is. His skin could easily be a dirty canvas. "We do, too."

"Eh?" Jeno asks, blinking confusedly - which, in all honesty, is mostly because looking at Donghyuck for a long time without a pause hurts him a little. All of them do. They're too alive.

A slightly smaller boy sitting next to Jeno on the desk squeals, his voice quiet and his face boyish, perhaps even more than the others. His nose has a nice curve to it, and he looks like an angel, somehow.

Donghyuck smiles. "You want to go back home. We do too. I suggest we do it together."

Jaemin's head falls to his shoulder with an awkward thump, making him look limp against Donghyuck, to which the boy doesn't mind. Jeno wonders if that's how it feels like. The blind trust of letting another body meet your own and calling it love.

"What do you mean?" he asks for clarification, leaning on his hands. There's not actual weight to his body since he's… Well, a forest spirit. But it's nice to fit in with humans.

"This is a shitty place, in case you haven't noticed," Chenle, one of the chinese kids, plays with the hem of his yellow socks, his brown hair making him look twelve at max. They're mostly fifteen - Jaemin, Donghyuck, Renjun. Jisung is the youngest, he's been quickly informed, and Chenle has been held back a year; Mark is the oldest, being sixteen, and he doesn't seem to like Jeno a lot. All he does is stare at him. "We've been wanting to get out for years. Run to the forest. Stay there during break. It's not for long… Just until the school year ends. Then we part,"

The others - except for Mark - nod in agreement, the word 'part' causing Jaemin and Donghyuck to grimace. Chenle smiles at them. "Not _part_ part. A few of us," he gives them a look. "Just can't be apart."

"Chenle makes it seem more exciting than it is," Renjun interferes, adjusting his glasses. They're nice and gold rimmed, nothing like Donghyuck's black and thick ones. "He's coming back with me to China. Jaemin and Donghyuck will head back to Jaemin's house on summer. Mark hyung will stay with Jisung here for now, and we all agreed to meet again for college."

"Do you perhaps live in the forest?" Jaemin's eyes curl up expectantly, glistening. "Can you please help us there, please? We'll behave. It's just until summer and then you can go home."

Jeno blinks again, avoiding his eyes because Jaemin is too distracting, like a shiny ring. "Um."

Why would rich kids want to live in the forest? What is so bad about this place they can't even bear to stay here for the rest of spring?

But he finds himself agreeing anyway.

**v.**

_then._

"You know, Donghyuck," Jaemin's lips curl around his teeth in one of his famous haunted smiles, the lights turned off and only a few candles between their beds making his face visible. "One day we'll get out of here."

"How so?" Donghyuck rolls in bed to lay on his side, his fist supporting his head.

"I don't know yet," the boy hums. "But we will. It's not the place for people like us. They don't like boys like us here."

_Us._ Donghyuck shivers. Whenever he and Jaemin are an _us,_ it's hard not to fear.

"What are we like?" the barely older questions him, eyes focused on Jaemin's bony sternum, peeking out of his baggy t-shirt. That amount of skin is terrifying, Donghyuck thinks. It's unfair how it stays there, right in Donghyuck's sight. "Who is 'boys like us'?"

"Well, you know," Jaemin plays with the black ends of his hair. "Boys like _us._ Boys that," his words get breathless, afraid even. "Boys that kind of like each other."

There it is.

_Kind of. Like. Each other._ The words float around in Donghyuck's head like a windows saving screen, and suddenly he feels a lot like shutting down completely. They've never addressed it like that before. Jaemin never said those words before. On God - Donghyuck hasn't even had his first kiss yet, much less did Jaemin. Except it's out in the universe now, and it feels real.

It's funny, Donghyuck notices. In life, everything gets real really fast - there are periods when things feel like a dream, but then they get real quite soon enough.

"Oh," he says, because there's nothing else to do. Because he's scared of breaking down, because there's a desk between them and Jaemin is right there and Donghyuck can't even begin to think about kissing him, about getting up and laying beside him. He simply can't, because he's afraid the longing will break him if he indulges in it too much. So he does what he does, which isn't something he's proud about, but still. He gives Jaemin his back and makes himself invisible under the duvet. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Donghyuck," Jaemin answers. Donghyuck is afraid to wonder how his face looks like.

Needless to say, Jaemin's effect on him is unbeatable. With his heartbeat quicker than ever, Donghyuck doesn't get any sleep at all.

_now._

They leave in the night, through a broken dorm window and hushed prayers pressed to their foreheads by Mark. Even Jeno got one - although he didn't seem to understand it.

"Angel of God, my Guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me here," Mark whispers to the top of Donghyuck's head, lips glued to the thin skin around his skull. His hands are cupping his nape, warm and ever so greedy like Donghyuck's mother's once were. _My child,_ his eyes agreed to hers. _My beautiful child._ He's not Donghyuck's mother, that much he knows. But through faith, through grace, maybe he could have her inside of him, maybe Mark's lanky teenage boy stature could serve as a vessel for God's will, for his mother's protection. "Ever this night be at their side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen."

"Amen," Donghyuck nods to him, wrapping his arms around Mark's middle for good measure. There's a lot of unspoken catholic guilt between them, lots of rageful arguments and obscene pleas, but Donghyuck knows this - leaving is a sin he doesn't have to be scared of committing.

There are a few things Donghyuck knows about leaving, and even fewer he knows about staying.

Leaving; that's a huge word. He learned it when he was around ten years old, after he saw the garage door closing behind him and he knew there would be no other place like the house he just left. When his hometown became a dot in the mundi, when his surroundings weren't dipped in his mother tongue. Leaving is somewhere between taking the jump and standing deadly afraid in the edge, a seven letter word that could fit anywhere, anytime. _Leaving._ Leaving. Donghyuck wonders if there is a right time to leave things - a moment when you think you're completely done and can peacefully back away - and there is. The right moment to leave, he figures, is now. Is always. It is always time to leave because there is always something ahead of the road, always a few paths still worth taking.

Staying is different. Staying is what he knows how to do, because it's all he's been doing. Like a hungry dog, Donghyuck used to sit and stay. What is he hungry for, he might ask, but the answer is forever unknown. Donghyuck knows he's starving - for art, for freedom, for roads less travelled and fingers never tasted. He soaks in hunger, in abstinence, so much that the moment to devour feels weird, feels unfamiliar and oh so out of place. Donghyuck knows starving, but he doesn't know consuming. And maybe that's why leaving is the best thing to do. Maybe that's why the thought scratches the back of his head constantly, maybe that's why he can't look at his teachers in the eyes sometimes.

Because he wants to leave. And, more than anyone, he knows leaving is a sin he won't be forgiven for.

But he wants it. So bad. So bad it burns through him, bubbling up in his skin, blushing his cheeks, an almost obscene desire to lock the door behind him and never come back. He dreams about it, thinks about it, eats it up and drinks it every morning like a cup of warm milk. Donghyuck exists because leaving is an option, because what he feels for the unknown has become lust, has become a pleasure he'd kill to have. It is painful and it is obscene, how much he wishes he could leave. How much freedom he desires - and how the amount of it will never be measured. How he'll always wish for more, more, more, greedier than he's ever been allowed to be.

Donghyuck wants to burn when he puts on the perfectly plastered uniform for the last time, his jacket hanging from his shoulders leaving a trail of fire behind. That's the thing - he _wants_ to burn. The few bits of self preservation are gone, leaving him open for everyone to see, to touch, to hurt. He wants to be more to them than to the rest, even if it meant breaking a few hearts along the way, even if it meant being larger than life and taking up too much space. That's something he'd surely be punished for in the future - but does he care? Is it worth it, the fear? He wants to leave, yes, but he wants to be missed. He wants to be missed maybe just as much as he wants to leave.

"Take care," the older pats his cheek, his eyes round and pleasant as they always have been. For a moment, Donghyuck tries to imprint that image on his brain; tattoo it around his inner arms, just so he could never forget how things are now, in this moment, and how they'll never be the same. The stars will never align like this again, and destiny won't ever create a fraction of second that's exactly like this one right now.

It's a desperate last attempt at closeness when he pecks Mark's lips, eyes filled with heavy tears. They've been best friends for so long - perhaps even longer than he's been best friends with Jaemin, and inside, Donghyuck aches. For Mark, for this terrible place, for his hand that grip his bible and the other that holds him by his nape. When he kisses Mark, it's not romantic to either of them. When he kisses Mark, Donghyuck is just gasping for one last moment of clean air before he drowns; one last pledge of tenderness and intimacy with his best friend - his _lifelong_ best friend, even if his life until now has been short.

They stare at each other for a second. Then Donghyuck leaves to the night, a chill running up his back and his school bag hanging from his trembling shoulders.

The others wait for him at the start of the forest, flashlights in hands and pitiful stares dripping from infantile eyes. It's very quiet, then. Jeno keeps his eyes ahead of them, leading their small group to an empty spot in the deep ends of the florest, and it's a very quiet path all the way there. Bugs buzz and buzz around them, the entire place alive, but no one's enjoying the trip. Leaving, he figured out, has always a bittersweet ache to it. How many days until the boarding school feels like a distant dream? How many days until Mark's kiss fades from his lips, until his prayers stop surging effect?

Exhaustion hits him after Jaemin arms their tent, and it's easy to pretend today never happened. It's easy to lay down in his arms and quietly sit there, a moment when you know things are about to change forever and you're stuck in the buzzing in between. Would he have done differently, if he knew he'd leave that place sooner or later? Would he have made more friends, made less friends, learned more, learned less, would he have liked people or would he have closed himself off? Oh, God, what would he have done.

Jaemin cradles him to his chest, peppering kisses on the crown of Donghyuck's head, the both of them sleeping over duvets on cold, hard ground. Jaemin's arms around his head, the world at the tip of his toes, a heavy unsettling feeling on the back of his stomach. Donghyuck registers them all, but he lets Jaemin hold him like a baby anyways. Lets him sway him side to side, as if he were holding a crying child on his arms, and that in itself turns on the faucet of tears Donghyuck has been holding back.

Donghyuck cries in his arms like a tall child. His sobs are loud and painful as he wails, and he knows it's because he just wants to be heard, to be seen. Because there's a toddler instinct in all of us, and distress melts by making it clear to everyone that we, too, are under great suffering. He sobs and cries and yells a little, because he wants to be heard. He needs to.

Jaemin stays quietly comforting him. If he shed a few tears of his own, there's no way Donghyuck could know.

**vi.**

Jaemin is the first one to wake up, Jeno notices. It's sunny, despite of everything.

"Hi," the boy sits beside him under a big tree, his uniform dirty and wet - by tears, Jeno presumes. Jaemin is the same height as Jeno's corporal form, and they fit awkwardly against the same wood, but it's okay. Being next to him is exhausting sometimes; he buzzes with life, it's like flexing a muscle for the entire day. But Jeno doesn't mind it. Jaemin is nice.

"Hi," Jeno nodded with his head, looking away.

"I know you lied to us," Jaemin comments nonchalantly, his palms on his own thighs like he's trying to prove himself as a non threat. "About the home thing. I've seen you before, you know."

"Huh?" the spirit asks, startled. He tries to move away, to dissipate in smoke, to be anywhere else but here, but something stops him before he could start planning his exit.

Jaemin's hand. On the top of his head. Petting the hair there gently, cold palms against cold matter. The first time Jeno has ever been touched; it leaves him paralyzed. "I know what you are," he hums. "I wrote a story about you in fourth grade. The ghost that's never been touched. I was… A neglected child. The ghost was me. They sent me to the therapist after that,"

Jeno's uneasiness grows little by little at each sentence, but Jaemin's hands hold him hostage to this world, marking him as real for the entire time his skin is in contact with Jeno's.

"Then… two years of therapy," Jaemin lets his head fall to the three, resting it against the harsh wood. "And then I met Donghyuck. On sixth grade," the boy recalls the story fondly, with a breathy voice. Jeno grows agitated, like a wild beast. "And, in that year, I think I've been touched more than I've been in the past decade. And I still am. I'm touched and seen now. Every day, Jeno."

The spirit gulps, and Jaemin turns to him. His eyes have something in them - it's melted hope, warmth, affection. It feels like he's filling Jeno up with his memories, flashes of Donghyuck's smile and Donghyuck's laughter and shared Burger King ice creams and a handful of crazy stars above them that seemed to fit right on the tender flesh of their ears, like earrings. Like carrying the world with you. Like being young and having the entire galaxy on your hands. Jeno sees them as though as on a dream, closing around him, and Jaemin smiles his soft smile, his other hand coming to cup Jeno's cheek. "What I'm saying, Jeno," he tells him, breathless. "Is that you can go now. Rest. Be at peace. We're not alone now."

Jaemin watches, in wonder, as Jeno's comforted face dissipates in thin air under his hands. Like a shooting star, almost there but never quite here.

He mourns his past for a second, then gets up and starts picking flowers for Donghyuck. It doesn't matter.

It really doesn't.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading! this isn't word vomit i promise. i thought a lot before while and after writing this. it feels really good :p
> 
> catch me in the comments if u can!!


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